This is an impressive book that speaks with authority, eloquence, and reasoned moderation to the important global debate about cultural identity and diversity. Globalization has produced considerable cultural anxieties about losses to ways of life and diversity. Conservatives continue to perceive a clash of civilizations as religions and other identity markers stand face to face. Progressives bemoan the effects of the purported cultural imperialism of global entertainment industries, especially Hollywood, as they outsmart the production of local cultural content and the dignity of representing oneself in one's own cultural images.
Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart bring the force of rigorous theorization and empirical substantiation to the cultural diversity debate, especially important for an issue where bold conjectures and populist pronouncements often capture headlines. Many social scientists have rightly argued that cultural globalization is old and varied, as are its effects. The economist Tyler Cowen (Creative Destruction: How Globalization is Changing the World's Culture, 2002) has been a forceful advocate showing that cultural diversity is increasing rather than decreasing through globalization. Cultural studies scholars have shown that even the effects of Hollywood films and television programs are many and varied in different cultures. However, the consensus, riding on the shoulders of political leaders who crafted the 2005 UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, has been that global cultural diversity is threatened. Norris and Inglehart specify the conditions and contexts under which global cultures are converging, thus depleting diversity, and then substantiate their claims with quantitative data and cautious explanation.
The authors present a “firewall model” of the conditional effects of “cosmopolitan communication” on cultural diversity. The effects vary between the cultural convergence of societies versus a backlash against cultural imports and maintenance of cultural parochialism. The model is well theorized and attends to many relevant literatures, but it is particularly sophisticated in its methods. To develop the firewall model, the authors bring in three factors: the degree to which countries allow in imports of cultural products (Chapter 3); the degree to which developing countries and poor societies are connected with the outside world through information and communication technologies (Chapter 4); and the degree to which societies are open to communication or cultural content flows described in the form of a composite cosmopolitan index (Chapter 5). The consequences of these firewalls for cultural diversity are then tested by regressing their values on changes in cultural and social values, as found through the World Values Survey data. The authors then present four sets of results (Chapters 6–9). In general, they find that societies that rank high on the cosmopolitan index, maintain relatively open markets, and are well connected through communication technologies tend to be cosmopolitan, are tolerant of outsiders, reveal global consumption patterns, exhibit a progressive morality that is open to changes in gender and sexual mores, are relatively secular, and have high levels of political and civic engagement.
Not enough can be said about the carefulness with which the authors explain their hypotheses, operationalizations, and the quantitative techniques that are employed. Those without a formal quantitative background will find it easy to follow the discussion, and hopefully will be attracted to the value of doing such analyses themselves. Empirical results are assayed against possible objections, and deepened through time series (Chapter 10) with explicit caution in the interpretation of results (Chapter 11). The authors conclude that “we need to be cautious about exaggerating the consequences of cosmopolitan communications, for good or ill, because a series of firewalls persist that preserve the imprint of distinctive national cultures” (p. 309). This is sure to annoy or disappoint those on the left and on the right looking for a clash of civilizations, or for a jihad fought with a McWorld involving progressive cultural commodification of our lives.
Despite the many merits of this book, it is also surprisingly remiss in giving insufficient attention to many political and historical factors. The missing politics are of two sorts. First, one has to ask, what kind of cultural politics do we find in the societies, such as Switzerland, Denmark, and Norway, that the authors uphold as exemplars of cosmopolitan places? How should we reconcile the force of the authors' data with the July 2011 shootings and bombings in Oslo, the 2009 Swiss ban on minarets affirmed by a 57% voting majority in a referendum, or the Jyllands-Posten newspaper controversy in Denmark following the publication of Prophet Muhammad cartoons in September 2005? In these cases, there was overreaction from the right-wing and religious fringes (about which Norris and Inglehart have written elsewhere), but there was also a widespread agreement about the alleged dangers of Islamic extremism, even in a moderate society such as Switzerland where the majority of its Muslims, mostly Bosniak, are secular and cosmopolitan. Switzerland, until quite recently, also allowed direct voting on pictures of potential immigrants for citizenship, a practice that was denounced as xenophobic and racist. My general point is that given racism and xenophobia in the so-called cosmopolitan societies, often affirmed in surveys, are we overestimating their tolerance?
Second, there is a narcissism of small differences in the colorful international politics shaping the flows of cultural products in the so-called cosmopolitan societies themselves that the authors do not describe. The Uruguay Round of trade talks (1986–94) almost fell apart over audio-visual exports from the United States to the European Union (interestingly, the authors use the term “audio-visual” popular at the World Trade Organization but resented in UNESCO). France and Canada then led the dramatic movement toward the 2005 UNESCO Convention (incorrectly confused in the book with a 2001 declaration on cultural diversity). This is not just a tempest in a teacup where cosmopolitan societies that are otherwise tolerant of each other fell apart over a minor issue, but a war of cultural images that consumed considerable political space. Moreover, if these cosmopolitans can barely stand the cultural imports from like-minded societies, one can understand how their cosmopolitanism decreases further when confronting “others.”
There are also historical reservations on the estimates of the communication gap, and on the presence or lack of cosmopolitanism in rich versus poor societies, respectively. First, Orientalism as a historical fact, as argued previously, is ignored in positing the values of cosmopolitanism. Second, openness among developing countries is defined in ahistorical and partial ways. Anthropologists such as James Ferguson and Jane Guyer have demonstrated through detailed ethnographies the complex connections between remote and “developed” societies throughout history, and unraveled both the patterns of cultural hybridity and political domination. Arjun Appadurai speaks of “scapes” and imaginaries” that tie the developing world with the other worlds. Furthermore, polls such as Gallup and World Public Opinion surveys from the Program on International Policy Attitudes often show better rates of acceptance of globalization among the developing worlds than in the “cosmopolitan” ones. Depending on the measurement tool, the communication gap or cosmopolitanism in poor societies might yield different results.
Although Cosmopolitan Communications overestimates the openness and tolerance in its cosmopolitan societies and underestimates it for poor ones, while remaining faithful to its data sets, its moderated claims are compelling. This excellent book deserves great recognition and, more importantly, attention from critical followers who will debate its findings while deepening and expanding its research agenda.
